Australia leads the way with uptake of DevOps

Most medium-to-large organisations in Australia have realised the business benefits of implementing a streamlined approach to the IT and development teams, according to new research from Rackspace.

The study found that 86% of Australian businesses have or are planning to implement DevOps practices, while 72% of businesses without a current DevOps strategy plan on implementing one by the end of 2017.

The research surveyed 700 medium-to-large businesses in Australia, the USA and the UK. It examined the understanding and implementation of the DevOps culture across organisations, providing insight into local and international businesses’ strategies for elevating DevOps priorities to benefit the business.

Encouragingly, 70% of respondents from Australia said they were familiar with the concept of DevOps. However, the primary reason businesses gave for not implementing a strategy was due to a lack of understanding as to what the process entailed (29%).

Business benefits

Australian organisations with a DevOps strategy were found to be the most likely to understand what they wanted to achieve from the process. Ninety-six per cent confirmed that they set clear goals for their DevOps strategy, compared to 93% of US companies and 82% of UK businesses.

The most common goals set by local organisations included: increasing business efficiency (81%, above the average of 65%), increasing customer satisfaction (61%) and increasing value to the business through introducing new capabilities (61%).

Other wider business benefits included: increased customer conversion or satisfaction (54%), increased customer engagement (50%) and reduced IT infrastructure spend (48%).

“What we’re seeing is that once businesses understand what DevOps entails, there is a realisation that taking a synchronised approach within the operations and development teams can transform a business’s approach to IT,” said Angus Dorney, director and general manager, Rackspace ANZ.

“Businesses are streamlining, standardising and automating processes to increase innovation and efficiency, which makes them more profitable and able to focus on the business objectives, rather than the processes.”

Operations driving implementation

The IT operations team and CIO overwhelmingly drive most DevOps practices in Australia, with 70% taking ownership of strategies, while the development team or the CTO drives 24%.

Despite this divide in managing the initial stages of DevOps, the research found that Australia is ahead of other locations when it comes to integrated practices. More than half (56%) of Australian businesses with a DevOps strategy said they have fully integrated the development team with the operations team, compared to 53% in the US and just 36% in the UK.

The majority of local businesses (58%) still to implement a strategy have highlighted the importance of aligning DevOps goals to the overall business objective as they look to build out their practices. This is ahead of the USA (56%) and the UK (47%).

Cover image courtesy Daniel Cukier under CC